Do you have commitment issues? I do and here’s what I’m doing about it.

I’m not talking about getting married. I’m talking about keeping your word to yourself.

I went to bed last night knowing that I had nothing written for Monday’s article. I thought to myself that I’ll be able to write something when I’m at the airport waiting for my flight.

Instead I’m at the airport waiting for my flight and I’ve started writing about one topic only to decide it’d be better for the future. Then started another topic and realized that it’s going to take longer to write it and then edit it.

I nearly wanted to give up.

In the back of mind I thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t publish an article on Monday. I could do it on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week and that’d be okay. It’s just one article.

I don’t think anyone would notice or even mind. I didn’t think anyone would send me an email asking where the Monday article was.

So I almost put this off but then I remembered something.

I remembered that’s what the old me would do. That’s the one that would commit to something and not keep his word. The one that would come up with excuses why it was okay to skip just once.

The person that I would disappoint the most if I didn’t keep my word is me.

If I already broke my commitment after week four, then what does that say about me? It says that it’s okay to not keep my commitment. It’s okay to say I’ll do something but not cause it’s just one time.

However to me I know it’s not okay.

I shared with you that I would publish every single Monday even if it was a 100 word article. The goal was to be consistent.

If I couldn’t commit myself to something as simple as this, how can I expect to commit to bigger projects and bigger goals?

It’s like how can I expect to climb Mt. Everest if I don’t go up a little hill first?

Instead of giving up, I silenced my excuses to and did not allow myself to skip this week. I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I stopped trying to write a long and epic article and decided to just write about my struggle at this moment with being committed. It’s not what I planned on writing, but I was running out of time and didn’t want Monday to pass without publishing something.

I also know many of you are struggling with the same thing.

I didn’t want the momentum to stop either. I had gone three weeks of publishing a new article here and felt great about that. I don’t remember the last time I had done that.

Even though there are 52 weeks in a year and missing just one week would not be that big of a deal, I didn’t want to stop my streak that I have going.

New results requires a new way of being

I also didn’t want to go back to the old way of doing things. One thing that I always remind myself is that if I don’t want this year to be like last year, I can’t keep doing the same crap.

That means I can’t keep breaking my commitments and make excuses to myself that it’s okay. I know that’s what I have done for the past couple years when it comes to writing. Then every year I get upset at myself for not writing more the previous year.

If I skipped this week, maybe I’d skip next week as well. My excuses would celebrate cause it won and knew that it could do it again anytime.

I didn’t want that to happen. I knew if I want bigger and better results in 2019, then that would require a new way of being and doing.

Do you have commitment issues?

Have you said that you’ll do something but you stop soon after? Like me, are you tired of making the same commitments and not following through?

What might be the problem is that you’re making too big of a commitment to start out.

I know that I didn’t want to commit to a certain number of words for each article I wrote. Even if I committed to something that seems reasonable like 500 or 1000 words, it would be too much to start.

It would be easier to make excuses to not write.

The only commitment I made to myself is to just publish one article a week. I didn’t give myself a word count. So I could technically write one sentence and that would satisfy my commitment. I wanted to make it nearly so easy to accomplish each week.

If there’s something you’ve been doing off and on and haven’t stuck with it, then I want you to think about committing to a simpler form of it.

If you’re committing yourself to spend one hour five days a week to some form of exercise, you might be overcommitting especially if you’re not someone that is in the habit of exercising.

Start with something more simple. I would say something stupidly simple. It should be something that would nearly be impossible for you to not do it.

For example commit to one pushup, one squat, or one sit up. I know you can do any of those and I know you can do just one.

Don’t make the mistake of committing to a morning routine with 2-5 things on your list. Just commit to one thing you want to do. That’s what I’ve been doing so far in 2019 and am getting great results from it.

Can you do one each day for the next 30 days? That is the true challenge.

Though it’s a easy to do, you would be surprised how easy it is to forget to do it or even talk yourself out of doing it. That’s where the practice of commitment comes in.

How can you expect to hit home runs if you can’t even hit a baseball? You’ve got to learn to make contact with the bat and the ball first.

So how can you expect to achieve your big dreams which require massive commitment and determination, when you can’t even stick with simple and easy commitments?

This is where you have to begin. Start with something so small. Start small so you build your confidence.

What’s a commitment you want to make to yourself? Take that commitment and think about the easiest daily action that you can for it. Share in the comments below!